A Matter of Life and Death: Welcome

A page for the Fenway Frankenstein Festival

Frankenstein explores issues of Life and Death

Life -- is it ethical to create a human being in the lab? Death -- should we be able to decide when we or those for whom we are responsible die? Mary Shelley looked at these questions in the context of early 19th century moral thought.

The same questions are still being discussed in the 21st century. Here are some books and articles that look at different aspects of the debate.

Creating Life ...

"When Barbra Streisand revealed to Variety magazine that she’d had her dog cloned for $50,000, many people learned for the first time that copying pets and other animals is a real business"-- Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review, April 13, 2018.

"In a major step toward creating artificial life, U.S. researchers have developed a living organism that incorporates both natural and artificial DNA and is capable of creating entirely new, synthetic protein"--Julie Steenhuysen, Reuters, Nov. 29, 2017 / 2:19 PM

"In 2010, the Venter lab announced that it had created the first bacterium with an entirely synthetic genome. This was reported to be the first instance of ‘artificial life,’ and in the ethical and policy discussions that followed it was widely assumed that the creation of artificial life is in itself morally significant. We cast doubt on this assumption."

This work offers mental health practitioners information about the choices that people must make regarding how they will die, or how they will resist dying, and about the ethical issues involved in making those choices.

Many who followed the Terri Schiavo case struggled to make sense of the flurry of opinions it generated. This NewsHour program, recorded during the last days of Terri Schiavo's life, presents two opposing yet thoroughly reasoned perspectives on the issues. Beth Israel Medical Center neurologist Dr. Russell Portenov explains the medical justification for removing the feeding tube, while Dr. Robert George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, raises legal and moral questions surrounding the decision. Keeping its focus on the Schiavo controversy, the program also explores implications for other potential end-of-life situations.

"When she was 21, Quinlan became unconscious after she consumed Valium along with alcohol while on a crash diet and lapsed into a coma, followed by a persistent vegetative state. After doctors, under threat from prosecutors, refused the request of her parents, Joseph and Julia Quinlan, to disconnect Quinlan's respirator, which the parents believed constituted extraordinary means of prolonging her life, her parents filed suit to disconnect Quinlan from her ventilator"--Wikipedia.